My Waistband and Me

Ever since I was little, I have never really liked my body. Well, when I was with other kids, I started to dislike myself. My body hadn’t bothered me until the other kids pointed out ‘flaws’. Stuff that they perceived as wrong.

Then I started to hate my own body.

But it wasn’t just them that pointed out the bad things about my body. My own Mom and her Ex-Husband did so too. Sometimes my younger brothers if they thought it was funny.

Mostly my Mom.

I am and was fat during my younger years. My Mom had started talking about how bad it was that I was fat. Looking at my gut with disgust. Or what my younger self perceived as disgust. As the little girl that I used to be didn’t know what else the look on Mommy’s face was. Why she would get so frustrated when we had to go up a size for me. Act so angry that I couldn’t wear clothes like the other little girls my age.

When she found out how much I weighed, she was even madder. To younger me, she seemed madder.

I began to despise food in any form, but I couldn’t stop myself from eating. Even if I had wanted to so many times. Thanks to me fearing that my Mom would be upset. Thinking that she would be upset with me. Doing whatever it was that Moms’ do when the oldest daughter doesn’t eat. Like making me see some doctor that I didn’t want to see.

Or yell at me for wasting food despite seemingly being upset that I ate at all.

It never made sense to my young mind why food was bad. Or why my Mom was mad when I ate it and mad when I hadn’t. All I knew is that I shouldn’t eat so much. Yet I was too scared to really stop eating in any form. That if I stopped eating it would disappoint Mom. After all, she spent so much money on the food she bought. If I didn’t eat it I was being a giant brat to my Mom.

I started despising food, despising the way that I looked in the mirror. Despising it so much that I just started drawing myself thinner. Looking like my prettier classmates instead.

Pretending that I wasn’t the fat, doughy, and ugly person that I thought I was.

I was on a lot of diets as a kid to change my weight. To look thinner and fit into the clothes that my Mom wanted me to. That I thought I wanted to. And I tried so hard to be as thin as Mom wanted me to be. To be as thin as I thought I needed to be. But I never really got thin. Sure, I lost some weight. Some to make my Mom happy with me for it.

Feeling like I was becoming pretty for once.

But that would never last. The diets would soon stop working for me. Then any medicine that Mom bought for me to lose weight wouldn’t work either. And I’d still be the fattest girl in class. Fatter than some of the boys too. I felt like I shouldn’t even live that I was so damn disgusting.

A few times I wished that I went to sleep and never woke up. It’s still something that I have trouble with as an adult. My weight and my passive suicide ideation. Along with my deep hatred of the body that I lived in my whole life.

Hating how I couldn’t ever get skinny like I had always wanted to.

But I’ve been trying to feel so much better about myself. Being a lot more positive about how I look and how much I weigh. Even if the negative thoughts I had about my body still creep in. I try to not let them have power over me. To ignore their annoying little voice as I continue with living my life. I think it’s going to take me a while. And I’m more than willing to continue trying.

Even if it feels like I’m Sisyphus most days. I won’t give up on myself for my own sake.